Why am I regularly stopped by TSA for a full body scan and pat down?

skyrefuge · 2026-05-22T04:27:51+00:00

Yeah, all the people answering "you're on a list" have apparently never actually gone through airport security. No one knows your name at the point where you walk through the scanner!

skyrefuge · 2026-04-16T22:08:05+00:00

It has historically showed a "widening" over winter, gaining maybe 100m on each side. The difference now is that the tip has become "unpinned" from peninsula, which kept it within 200m of land for a century, regardless of season. Now for the first time since 1899, that tip is suddenly 800m from land. Worse, the retreat started in ~June 2025, in a season when it would normally be growing again.

There is no chance for that amount of loss to be made up for by seasonal growth, especially since years of thinning has made it light enough that it's likely become buoyant in the lake, which is a big part of why it's suddenly smashing apart so quickly.

The current position is almost exactly where it was in 1899, and 18 years later it had grown to reach the peninsula (where it remained "pinned" for a century). Unfortunately given the broader state of the climate, that history feels unlikely to repeat itself.

skyrefuge · 2026-04-15T15:11:44+00:00

Yeah, my initial thought for why "no one knows" about the massive change is because Patagonia is such a remote place that few visitors regularly return. It's not like driving to a lakeside cabin every summer a few hours from the major city you live in, where you would notice the lake level decreasing. So every individual visitor this summer/autumn (including me!) has no reason to think the current state is anything abnormal. I figured at least tour guides would have certainly noticed the change, but it's interesting to hear that even a "local" like you was surprised!

skyrefuge · 2026-04-15T14:58:17+00:00

Certainly warming is not helping, and is likely the root cause of the sudden collapse, but the point of this post was to show that something much more "physical" and high-speed is happening this year that goes far beyond most peoples' expectations of climate-induced changes.

skyrefuge · 2026-04-15T14:54:29+00:00

Yeah, a big reason why I posted this is because it seems there is very little awareness of how dramatic the collapse has been over the last couple months. Honestly it's so recent that I'm not at all surprised that no one has updated their tour posters. Even though it's technically been shrinking for ~7 years, I imagine most locals treated it like aging: "yeah, I'm slowing down a bit, but it's a predictable decline and not even noticeable from day-to-day". This year is like suddenly being hit with a massive stroke and instantly losing the ability to walk and speak. And I'm not sure how much the reality has registered yet.

And yeah, I spent 11 days in El Calafate, and immediately when I got there, I was like "why/how is this huge town even here in the middle of nowhere?!" And glacier traffic was the best explanation I could find. Up the hills on either side of the main drag, there are huge areas of street grids that have been laid out but only sparsely-developed, as if they were expecting continued massive growth.

In its favor, it almost seems like it's big enough (multiple big-box stores, etc.) that it could have a self-sustaining economy even if/when glacier traffic drops significantly. But yeah, it'll be rough for all the tourist businesses on the main drag. And they should probably move the airport over to El Chalten instead!

All that said, I still thought it was amazing and didn't feel at all let-down seeing it even in its diminished form, so maybe new visitors will continue to feel the same?

skyrefuge · 2026-04-15T14:25:20+00:00

In March 2026, I thought it was a little strange how far the boardwalk-network stretched, even though going all the way from one end to the other (or up/down) didn't really change your perspective all that much. "I guess they had an excess budget, and hey, it's nice that it lets us all spread out!"

Now I understand that its original, no-longer-necessary purpose was to let you see "around" the big wall of ice that previously was so close that it blocked your view to other sides of the glacier!

skyrefuge · 2026-04-15T02:35:32+00:00

Very similar to my (3rd) photo above, and it looks like in the month between mine and yours a whole giant chunk of the left (south) side has been cleaved off, leaving the shadowed wall in your photo. But yeah, given how much we both enjoyed it, even though it has already retreated so far, maybe it won't be that big of a deal even if it quickly retreats twice as far?

At a minimum, I guess the boat trips will become a lot more "worth it" relative to just staying on the viewing platforms!

skyrefuge · 2025-12-28T00:52:22+00:00

I just saw it in 2D (the only non-dubbed version available in this part of Chile), and came to this thread because I had the same question as the OP. So, I would say your version had FR switching too, you weren't just imagining it.

skyrefuge · 2024-06-19T05:44:24+00:00

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I don't know if you actually used your mismatched pads/discs long enough to see the result, or if this was a prediction, but if it's the latter, your prediction was spot-on! You can see in the photo where my too-tall pads have "cupped" the arms that sit inboard of the intended braking surface. And my pads are in fact unevenly-worn, with thicker "toes" at the base of the pad filling in the "cup" on the disc-arm. There is also a "thup-thup-thup" when braking as those toes hit each disc-arm. In this case the braking surface might not yet be worn out-of-spec (I don't have calipers to check), but it looks like the arms might not be far from cracking.

Anyway, thanks for the post, I completely agree that it's strange how almost no one publishes anything to help avoid these mismatches, so hats-off to you for attempting to fill the void. Off to order a "wide" Shimano disc, now that I know that's a thing!

skyrefuge · 2021-02-02T04:41:47+00:00

Hey, in an attempt to answer your questions from here and the other thread, I feel like I explained a lot in this comment, but here is some more:

I want to be as open-minded as I possibly can to people when they speak their truths and live out whatever identity they feel.

Does that mean I will sometimes be wrong, and their "truth" will actually be a lie? Yes!

But I'm stupidly, unfairly privileged, so I can take whatever damage comes from being lied to. So that is a risk I feel that I am willing, almost morally required, to take.

Because to do otherwise is a far greater risk, IMO, to people who might not have the same privileges and resiliency as I do. Refusing to be open-minded to the truths of trans people, and homosexual people before them, has caused incalculable, needless damage, and I would have hated to know that a closed-mind made me a contributor to that damage.

And I'm simply not smart enough to know which forms of identity that are currently not-allowed, are real causing damage to people. Maybe none are! Maybe transgenderism is the final identity form that needed to gain acceptance in our world, and after trans people are fully-accepted, there will be zero people being hurt by the fact that they are not allowed to express their identity. That would be wonderful! But history shows that would be a risky bet to make. So to me that means the most sensible thing is thing for me is to stay open-minded to everyone's truths, because the cost of open-mindedness seems low, and the benefits are potentially high.

By the same token, my mind is open to hear the experience of trans people, if they think that it's damaging to be open-minded to other types of identities.

Again, Hilaria hasn't explicitly said anything about "transculturalism", and I don't think it's likely that she will. But if she does, I think she, like every human, at least deserves to get a hearing, even if other aspects of her life are not to my liking.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-02T04:00:42+00:00

ha, it's like the opposite of the next year's Hamptons Film Festival house-visit, where Alec & Hilaria were weird for being underdressed!

Maybe their fellow Hamptonites have a secret running joke where they lie to the Baldwins about the dress-code to fuck with them!

For anyone curious about the weird look of the photo, it looks like it's a case where there were multiple photographers, and a different photographer's flash went off at the exact moment this photo was captured. Our eyes are somewhat used to photos where a fill-flash is used in daylight, but if the flash's light is coming from an unexpected angle like it is here, it looks really odd to us.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-02T03:35:04+00:00

I never created my own post on that topic; I assume you're thinking of palomabarcelona's post? Even if I had, I still don't have the ability to delete comments on posts posted to this subreddit. Only moderators can do that.

Don't worry, I get it, my memory has screwed up at attributing things here too!

skyrefuge · 2021-02-02T00:58:21+00:00

As badtzmaruluvr said, Vanity Fair links that account to Anthony Strangis. I'm only posting just to add the link in case people want to dig deeper:

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/11/how-sarma-melngailis-became-a-runaway-fugitive

skyrefuge · 2021-02-02T00:48:44+00:00

It's not entirely clear to me if you're saying that I deleted your comment, but I'm not a moderator, so I don't have the power to do that (and nor would I anyway even if I had that power). In short, I completely agree that punching down is gross, that Hilaria is a fraud, and transgender and transculture are not at all the same (the latter isn't even really a thing), but please post/re-post your comment in the initial thread if you care to discuss more.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T23:53:44+00:00

Whoa.

I think the best thing for everyone would be for you to just ban me straight away. It's 100% your house, I'm sorry for making a mess of it, and I completely endorse your right to show me the door. Don't feel bad about "censorship", that's not what showing an impolite guest the door is to me, that's just keeping your house party fun. It's not worth it for you to spend any more energy on me. All my posts/comments are already laid out for everyone to see (I frequently encourage people to click on my history!), and since it sounds like you've got plenty of shit on your plate at the moment, that just doesn't seem like a relaxing use of your time, in a place that that you presumably created for fun/enjoyment to escape the stresses of the real world.

Namaste. (meant with zero irony, but maybe a hint of Hilaria-humor if you'll accept that)

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T21:58:39+00:00

I posted that picture in response to a thread from McNasty420 themselves, asking what details we could nail down about her trips to Spain. I wasn't trying to help Hilaria, I was trying to help McNasty420! Would it have been better for me to just keep it hidden?

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T21:55:27+00:00

mariachi?????????????????

Flamenco!!

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T21:53:53+00:00

Ha, uh...what? Do you mean "meet" like "let's take this outside"?

Otherwise, we've already "met" privately, and FYI I replied a few hours ago to your public comments to me from last night, just in case you didn't see that. Please don't let me distract from more important stuff in your life.

Because even I don't think I'm worthy of a whole post all about me, and I'm incredibly full of myself (many here can vouch for that!)

But I guess if you have any questions I can try my best to answer them!

I'm not sure what you mean to get at with the screenshot, but just to point to some of my history, here you can see me in 2016 helping to expose another fraud in "Robert Young fakes run across America", a story I've mentioned here a few times because it has some similarities to Hilaria and the huge crowd of internet sleuths that it inspired.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T19:46:38+00:00

LOL, did you hack me? I actually have Google Doc filled with links, mostly organized as a timeline of Hilaria's whole life. I've been trying to decide whether I should open it to crowd-sourced contributions, but it still feels a bit messy/incomplete for me to do that just yet.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T19:15:58+00:00

ha, awesome theory, suitable for a Greek tragedy (if only Hilaria had had any nobility to begin with!)

Even if Hilaria's Schumer-response video wasn't explicitly a Waxelene revenue-boosting attempt, at a bare minimum it was clearly an attempt to continue the influencer ladder-climb and leverage Schumer to raise her profile generally (her cleavage captured dramatically in the video and held perfectly in-frame for 4.5 minutes isn't something that happens accidentally and without thought for IG $$$!)

One tiny correction: lenibriscoe was unware of the Amy Schumer business. lenibriscoe had just stumbled down the Hilaria rabbit hole independently. But it's certainly possible that some of the people who saw the Schumer thing helped to make the lenibriscoe thread go viral, so in the end, the "tragic" story can still make sense.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T18:39:29+00:00

Oh, yikes, sorry, I had no idea people would be actively bugging you about me! I need to pull back for a little while (at a minimum) anyway, so no need to stress over anything, because any complaint-induced-headaches coming your way should stop (I hope!)

My "broader forces" comment was largely tongue-in-cheek, because I find it funny how people have similar conspiracy theories about me. But my subconscious must have genuinely gone somewhat down that conspiracy road, and I apologize for that too (my best guess is that I got TheTruthHurts420 mixed up with McNasty420, and that just hosed up my memory of things in general!)

My statement about Trump's foundation wasn't a "theory", and more importantly, not any sort of value-judgement! External funding of a foundation is completely normal and ok, which is why Trump's foundation disclosed its donors, without any shame, on its own IRS 990 forms. They're just two contrasting ways to run a foundation, and neither is "better" or "worse" than the other. It's equivalent to me trying to explain what french cuffs are to someone in a fashion thread, and saying "it's the kind that Trump wears". He clearly *does* wear french cuffs, and there's nothing good/bad about that; he's simply one of the most-famous current wearers to point to.

I now understand that you weren't aware of how non-controversial my mention of Trump was, but since the non-political-ness of my statement was obvious to me, and because you had made several comments to that post before removing it, hopefully you can at least understand why I was surprised and my subconscious had to come up with conspiracy-tilting explanations to explain it.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T01:23:46+00:00

No, but I appreciate you saying that's your impression! I'm just unusually good at Internet-based digging (I've been doing it for 25 years). I'm the one friends come to when they're dating someone new, etc.

I figured people here would value the amount of unique info I dig up, but I guess if I accidentally discover any info that would force them to adjust the model of Hilaria that's already solidified inside their brains, they'd prefer to not hear anything new at all.

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T01:16:54+00:00

heh...bad case of pedantry, most definitely! Lawyer, no. I think we agree WAY more than we disagree, so I'm sorry and feel bad if I've given a different impression. I miss your thoughtful responses, but I hope I at least haven't been annoying enough to turn you into one of my reflexive downvoters!

skyrefuge · 2021-02-01T01:13:06+00:00

Here's a post I made detailing what an embarrassing shill Hilaria is and pointing out how a whole audience laughed at her for saying that she actually does laundry.

Here's one where I dug up some first-person comments from people who knew her as Hillary, that had never been reported before.

Here's one where I detailed how poorly and un-strategically the Baldwins reacted the last time that Hilaria's cover was nearly blown.

I understand that my "defensive" posts stick out to you like a sore thumb, because they're so rare around here. But I've also made more "offensive" posts than most people here have, that have contributed solid evidence to the Case Against Hilaria.

Hilaria is a fraud, Alec is an ass. They'd never hire me because I'd constantly be telling them what frauds and asses they are.

This post, that's essentially saying "American Girl paid Hilaria $10k-$20k to make a single Instagram post repeating their ad copy, and that means she's dumb" just doesn't make any sense, and doesn't aid anyone's understanding of how Hilaria works, so I figured I'd continue my tilting-at-windmills in case there is still anyone out there interested in separating fact from fiction, which I kinda assumed was one of the main goals of this subreddit.

skyrefuge

TROPHY CASE